honest laborer who can neither read nor write, but who has the sense of duty in his heart, is a better citizen than the accomplished scholar who has blunted his conscience and sharpened his wits, so that he can swindle his fellows out of a fortune.

I may be told that, however necessary moral teaching may be, it is the duty of the home, and that the school may be excused from it. But I reply that, if the state owes each child it assumes to educate a moral, as well as a mental, training, it cannot rightfully rely on the performance of this duty by others; that the children who come from the worst homes, where no such instruction is thought of, need it most; that even in homes where it is theoretically valued, business, cares, or pleasures practically shut it out; and, besides all this, while I would not underestimate either the absolute or the relative worth of home teaching, the teaching of the school supplements the best work of parents, with advantages of its own.

Can we teach ethics without religion? Probably. I say probably, because there is not much experimental proof. We hear more than we see of that kind of teaching. But we cannot teach with authority, we cannot teach with impressiveness, without thought of Him who is the Absolute Right. The peculiarity of Christianity itself is not in the revelation of new ethical truth, but in bringing to us that new sense of God, and of our relation to him, which makes the idea of duty regnant in the heart. Matthew Arnold very inadequately defines religion as "morality touched with emotion." But although it is much more, it is that; and without religion morality has neither emotion nor motion. It will stay in the text-book.

And so, coming to the heart of the problem, I say that I would have religion taught as a part of our public education. What religion? The only religion that is a part of the common law, the only religion that permeates our literature, and the religion that is related to all our modern civilization-Christianity. But it should be the Christianity of Christ, not that of sects; the Christianity which, in its practical aspects, is fitted to be the universal religion of mankind; which appeals, as did the Master, for its test to the common judgment of what is right.

Can the public school teach such a common Christianity? It

were indeed a scandal to our religion if there were no ground upon which its nominal adherents could stand together. Can it be that our schools must be left pagan because we are sectarian? Such a conclusion is repulsive to the common sense of the community. All the tendencies of the age are toward breadth and unity. I think there are but very few who call themselves Christians who would prefer that our schools should be godless rather than that they should confine themselves to the Lord's Prayer as their liturgy, the Two Great Commandments as the rule of holy living, and the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount as the inspiration and comfort of the soul. I would have the state, then, in this spirit, undertake the work of religious training in three

ways.

First. Let the sentiment of worship be cultivated by opening the schools with the Lord's Prayer (in which, however, the children should not be required to join), followed by some classic hymn of pure devotion. I would connect with this some reading of selected Scriptures. The teacher who lacks either the head or the heart to render this simple service impressive is out of his place.

Secondly. I would have attention paid to the Bible as literature. The modern neglect of this book in our common and in our higher education is discreditable. Mulford, in his work, "The Nation," says: "The Bible has been removed from the course of study in universities, and then from academies, and has no place, corresponding simply, as a history and literature, to the history and literature of Greece and Rome;" and he well adds that "this is the result, in part, of the principle which has referred it exclusively to the sphere of the dogmatist and the ecclesiast." It is clearly a misfortune that the memory of the young people of to-day is not so richly stored as that of the old with immortal passages of Scripture. Considered merely as literature, what is there to equal them?

The "Fortnightly Review " recently called upon distinguished men of letters to furnish "the one passage in prose which appears of its kind the best." Without quoting more, Matthew Arnold says: "Passages from the Bible I leave out. Things like Foxes have holes,' etc., comply with the test as much as anything in the

world." John Addington Symonds calls the 28th chapter of Job from the 12th to the 28th verse "absolutely the greatest passage known to me." Frederic Harrison, equally famed for his fine literary taste and his skeptical mind, puts the Bible in the front rank; and Frederick Myers tells us that "turning from Plato to English prose, there seems little outside the Bible and Prayerbook which does not jar by comparison." And Mr. Cross, in his biography of George Eliot, writes: "We generally began our reading at Witley with some chapters of the Bible, which was a very precious and sacred book to her, not only from early associations, but also from the profound conviction of its importance in the development of the religious life of man. She particularly enjoyed reading aloud some of the finest chapters of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul's Epistles."

Ample as are the grounds upon which, as a matter of scholarship, we may urge a better acquaintance with the Bible, I would not conceal the fact that in my own mind there is a far more weighty reason, because of the spiritual life with which it is instinct. He must indeed be a blind bigot, whether an ecclesiastic or a scientist, who will not see that the Scriptures, "without note or comment," have been a wonderful power in the regeneration of the individual man, and in toning up the life of the state.

Thirdly. Due place should be given to the study of ethics. This, for practical purposes, is well defined as that science "which teaches men their duty, and the reasons of it." Merely as a matter of intellectual discipline it is of great value, as training the power of moral reasoning, which is of far more value than that of mathematical, in the conduct of life. Without dwelling upon this, it would seem to require no argument to prove that a serious gap would be left in any education which had no teaching of the truths relating to character and to moral obligation. Nor does the contention of a few, that, because some points in ethics are subjects of controversy, we should teach nothing, deserve much notice. Ethics has been studied by the subtlest intellects of the world thousands of years in advance of modern science, and the latter has more disputable and unsettled propositions.

I have no occasion to consider whether the pulpit of the day

gives sufficient importance and emphasis to ethical culture. I say nothing as to the relative influence, in this direction, of its teaching, and of that of the school. But I fear the statistics as to the number of children availing themselves of such ethical instruction would be startling. Beyond this there is the further consideration that, while the pulpit has certain advantages of its own in the impressiveness of its teaching, the school also has its advantages. To many minds the great ethical truths are made more real if they are taught as the verities of physics are taught. They thus take rank with the laws of nature in their absoluteness and uniformity.

How much scholastic rubbish might we well exchange for an intellectual conviction that it was sure as the law of gravitation that suffering follows sin; that our happiness depends more on what we are than on what we have; that "character not only fixes destiny, but is destiny itself"! These are ethical truths in which all philosophers, from Socrates to Spencer, would unite; and they are such truths as are calculated to regulate the conduct of life. I am not sanguine enough to suppose that the teaching of them would insure righteous living; the mere teaching of truth never insures wisdom; but, unless we are prepared to abandon all teaching on that account, we have no reason to abandon the teaching of moral truth.

I confess that I find it difficult to appreciate the objections that may be made to the outline of religious instruction that I have given. But I should seek to meet both those who think that too much religion would be taught, and those who think too little would be taught, in a spirit of conciliation.

As to agnostics. There are many noble souls who sympathize with George Eliot when she says: "I have no controversy with the faith that cries out and clings from the depths of man's need. . . . I gather a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be limits or negations in my own moral powers and life experiences which may screen from me many possibilities of blessedness for our suffering human nature." Such agnostics would not be troubled if the faith of childhood were nourished and strengthened by hymn and prayer and holy word; nor, as scholars, would they undervalue the

worth of some acquaintance with the literature of the Bible. Undoubtedly there is a small fraction of unbelievers who have no more sweetness than light, and who are belligerent in their attitude toward religion. This class, having men in it ready with voice and pen, make more noise than their number warrants. They are implacables; and as to them, if they have children, society has only to determine whether it will insist on its right to give them religious training while in the public school, or whether, for the sake of peace, it will allow the parent to keep them at home during religious exercises. But if some must lose their benefit, this surely is no reason why all should.

And now as to the Roman Catholics. It may at least be said that they would have no new grievance. More than that, I think many would feel that there was a distinct gain in removing from the schools the reproach of being "godless." I realize that the Catholics are a large class of our fellow citizens, and that they are sensitive as to all matters affecting the religious belief of their children. The state should in good faith undertake, in the manner and to the extent I have indicated, unsectarian relig ious instruction. No trouble is apprehended from Frotestants. If the Catholics, whether reasonably or unreasonably, have any jealousy or distrust of such teaching, I should be disposed to hand over these departments, for the instruction of their children, to teachers of their own faith, under such arrangements as should insure an intelligent, systematic, and faithful performance of that duty. Such provisions are not uncommon in the continental countries of Europe. As the state, in its opinion, at least, would provide for the impartial performance of all its obligations by its own competent teachers, this permission to those dissatisfied, to do the work by their own instrumentalities, would not, of course, create any claim on the state for compensation.

I do not pretend that the irenical scheme of religious instruction which I have proposed will satisfy the leading ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church. It will make our schools better, but it will not take away their desire for schools of their own.

And what shall we say of these parochial schools? That the separation of our children into two distinct classes, divided by